Crowdsourcing a Debt-Crisis Solution

While politicians in Washington continue to dither and bicker over ways to reduce the national debt, more than a quarter-million Americans have already taken a crack at the problem using an online simulation tool from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “Stabilize the Debt.”

The tool forces users to make hard choices and tradeoffs on revenues, expenses and priorities in order to get the debt monster down to size. Each time you propose an expenditure or a budget cut, the tool shows you how much that will add to or subtract from the federal debt between now and 2012, including interest.

Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 45,000 by 2015, and you will reduce the national debt by $840 billion. Raise the Social Security age to 68, and you will reduce the debt by $160 billion; create a colony on the moon, and you will increase the debt by the same amount.

Intriguingly, reports CRFB today after analyzing the responses of 8,000 users who volunteered details about themselves, 71% of Democratic users were in favor of raising the retirement age, while only 18% of Republicans insisted that none of the Bush-era tax cuts should be eliminated. The vast majority of users from both parties – 94% – favored using a combination of spending cuts and tax increases to get the federal budget under control.

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